Reacting last week to an MSNBC guest saying Trump would choose someone he was "comfortable with," former Rep. Joe Scarborough (R-Fla.) said it meant the person likely would be a "white man."

Hannity said the outcry over the choice was predictable, playing tape of a fiery rhetorical speech by Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) in 1987, in which the lawmaker ripped President Reagan's choice of Robert Bork.

Kennedy, along with other Democrats and a few Republicans like Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, successfully torpedoed Bork's nomination, which Hannity said resulted in "Bork" becoming a verb.